Round 1: Pyrrhic Victory for Me

Round 2: Overwhelming Victory for GRASS, extremely frustrating defeat for Me

Round 3: Resounding Victory for Me, though not without difficulty

As Alice can attest to, I was weeping in frustration and defeat earlier today during round 2 of my struggle with GRASS. But with renewed vigor and new tactics, I pushed on.

While I still can't do my viewshed analysis, I can view my data now and perform other analyses on it, such as a least cost path analysis. And a recent check of the email shows that my professor is tired of my questions and told me to wait until he can help me work it out on Monday. In the meantime, I can do my least cost paths on Thermopylae and Marathon. Yay for half the project getting done!

Thank God I got it worked out.

Tim Burton's Alice in Wonderland

I've never been a big fan of Alice in Woinderland, but I do like Tim Burton films... I might hafta put this in my planner.

I'M DONE. DONE DONE DONE DONE DONE.

I HAVE CONQUERED YOU, ECOLOGICAL DETERMINISM
...kinda...

I DO NOT WANT TO SEE YOU AGAIN, at least until tomorrow when I get the edited version back...

NOW I CAN RELAX. For a whole 1 hour before I move onto my other work and...

THE NEXT PAPER. SOMEBODY PLEASE KILL ME NOW AND SPARE ME.

I did not get as much writing done tonight as I woould have liked, but I finished up the frickin' history section.

The explanation section will require going over my sources again, which means doing it tomorrow, not tonight.

W00t for being over half-way done length(if not content)-wise!

So, I didn't get done nearly as much today as I wanted, due to the fact that the train kept dropping power, thus turning off my comp (I don;t have working batteries, so my comp wouldn't stay on).

But! I have 4 pages down now and a plan for the rest of the paper. I know now that I have way more than enough material to fill 10 pages. So I just need to worry about getting all my content in.

Easier said than done.

And for those of you wondering, I'm writing on ecological determinism in processual archaeology. Like, why it came about, what it's about, and why we don;t believe it today. It's actually wuite interesting.

Oh, and one more thing, wish me luck, because me and my friends are dun dun dun!! Going Black Friday Shopping. I really hope I'm not trampled to death...

Well, I think I should be off for now, seeing as we're hosting Thanksgiving this year and that means cleaning and cooking as well as writing tomorrow. I'll need my strength.

Ok, here are some lines from the play (translated by yours truly) that prove why you should be laughing (if you aren't cringing...)
___________
(ln 740-744)
Oedipus(OI): Don't ask me yet. But speak, what was in Laios' nature, having been in the prime of his age? (Aka, what did he look like? Was he in the prime of manhood?)

Iokaste(IO): He was dark, just blooming on his white flowering head, he didn't differ much from your appearance. (Aka, he looked a lot like you, except he was old enough to be your father.)
____________

Choros(XO): I won't go, worshiping,
to the untouchable center of the earth,
nor to the temple in Abai,
nor to Olympos,
unless these apparent things
apply to all mortal men.
But oh Zeus, all powerful
ruler of all, if you are justly called that,
don't let this escape the notice
of you and your always undieing rule.
They are dieing, these oracles of Laios
that they already are put away,
for nowhere is Apollo manifest with honors.
These godly things are dieing.
(Aka, angst whine about how going to the temples is useless because nobody honors Apollo or the rest of the gods anymore.

IO: Oh lords of the country, this notion just occured to me to go to the temple with this wreath and incense offering in my hands. [...]Since there is nothing more I can do for you, of Lycian Apollo, for you are nearest, I have come as a suppliant with these offerings, so that you might grant us some untainted release. [...]
(Aka, oh look, I'm going to go to the temple and pray to Apollo)

(Messenger from Corinth comes on)
Messenger(AG): Might I learn from you where the house of the king Oedipus is? Or rather tell me, if you know, where he is?

XO: Oh stranger, the house is here, and he is inside
But here is his wife and mother *pause* of his children.
____________

Ok, for that last one, I'm totally serious about the pause in the last line. The Greek says:
gyne de meter // th' ede ton keynou teknon

So, this play is in meter, and in everyline there's a pause (a caesura). I've marked it here with the //.

So that line goes: The wife and mother *pause* of his children is here.

And beyond that line, it just goes into platitude between the messenger and Jokaste, where the messenger praises Jokaste as a good wife and mother and how he has such good news for her (later, he'll be one of the ones to tell her that she is actually Oedipus' mother).

Yeah. This is totally a comedy XD

Please tell me you see the humor, too...

This has turned into a bit of a fiasco.

I am so f-in' pissed. I refuse to take blame for this. I refuse. I am going to hold onto my anger for once so that I am not walked over. Again. Not again.

I gave them plenty of time to do a simple task and yet some of them couldn't do it. And apparently, some decision was made at a meeting I was supposedly at but I have absolutely no recollection of it. So I have to do more work.

And now I have to do it all again to make sure that everything fits with the syllabi. Why was this put off so long?

I refuse to take any significant blame in this. And I can damn well freak out if I want to. I have f-in' work to do aside from this (as we all do) and I want to get this f-in' done. Now. So that I can move on to other important projects. So don't bitch at me for freaking out.

I will be angry and I will not back down. Not this time, god dammit.

I've had this for a bit, but forgot about it ^^;;

Inspired by Skylark's prompt of 'wyvern' I was in a pokemon mood XD And Suz, please read ^_^

Oh yeah, set between a DM and one of his players ^^
( Whhaaatt? )

XD

OMG SKY I JUST GOT YOUR PACKAGE. THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU (ad infinitum).

But right now, I don't know whether I should love you or hate you, because OMG so shiny, but i really need to do work on the long car ride I have coming up, not write drabbles/mini stories with the cards you sent.

So my conflicted feeling reminded me of a poem by Catullus (number 85):

Odi et Amo. Quare id faciam, fortasse requiris?
Nescio, sed fieri sentio et excrucior.

I love and I hate. What should I do, you might ask?
I don't know, but I feel it happening and I suffer.

Translated by Me ^_^

So perfect for right now XD To write or to translate, that is the question...
And don't you slackers answer, because I know what you'll say :P

But thank you sooooooo much, Sky :) I will totally be sending you more beadies when I get back home, because this totally deserves more than a few measly beaded creations. Because...

This Is Awesoooommmeeeee!!!

^____________^

So promotion usually takes 6-8 hours.

It's a long, drawn out affair that just exhausts you. But this was mid-semester promotion, during midterms time. In fact, it was last night and I had a midterm this morning. Totally not good timing. Anyway, Sabumnim actually listened to us.

We managed to finish everything in 3 hours.

I was amazed. I mean, it was tough. 9 burpees... whoo, that's a lot of leg work. Then we had to do planks, and side planks, and more. And for the technique portion, I wasn't grouped with my normal group, because I'm a belt above them, so I was put with blue belts (I was purple). Boy was I nervous, especially for the upper body techniques section (he called for moves I hadn't formally learned >.<). But I felt confident with my kicks. And I messed up on the Tae Guk III form, but I totally nailed the Pal Gwe forms that I did (I learned them over the summer). Well, I messed up one move on Pal Gwe II, but I appeared confident (and Sabumnim doesn't know Pal Gwe forms XD ).

And I punched straight through the board ^____^


Now onto Greek.

Man, I was so worried about it. With it being right after promotion exam and my weekend being so busy, I was worried about studying enough. I mean, 400 lines, give or take 25 lines or so, that's a lot. But I re translated it all and studied my conditions chart.

At first on the test I faltered, but then I built up steam and kept going. I finished the test in just about an hour, including all the grammar questions. And I knew them all! I was so happy :D I still am so happy!

And that marks the end of my midterms

Now onto why I hate English. Example from linguistics class.

Find the ambiguity : John saw the man on the corner.

Redundancy is the way to resolve that ambiguity. Ancient Greek would not have that problem (well, ok does have some ambiguities, but those are mainly in poetry where it's supposed to be ambiguous. In Greek, there wouldn't be a question about the meaning).

So, I typed this up for a friend on here in a message, and I didn't wanna loose it, so have an interesting story ^^

( Teiresias, Abbreviated )

Done! I am done with it!

I'm actually updating from class. Just handed it in a few minutes ago. It actually wasn't that bad. There was one question I had to half bull, but I'm pretty sure that I cam pretty close. Other than that yay!

By my estimations, I'll either get a B+ or an A-. I'm hoping for the A- of course XD

Well, Prof. Estrada-Belli is gonna start class again soon, so I better conclude this quickly.

After class I have to run over to the Pru to buy a nice dress shirt for my senior portrati, then hopefully I'll have time to run back to my room for a shower. If not, then I'll just wash my face and straighten my bangs. That'll have to do.

Alright, I think that's all for now. Laters! ^^

So this conversation came to me during my Archaeo Theory class. My thoughts on the class should be apparent through this very short drabble XD

( Read more... )

OMG CORBA

Tsaiko would probably be the only one to know this, but it stands for Object Management Group's Common Object Request Broker Architecture. I'm sorry, but it just made me giggle, which I really need right now.

GIS midterm tomorrow, and I'm really busy with meetings tonight >.

Well, lemme get this outta the way first: I got a 97% on my linguistics midterm!! ^_________^ And I must have gotten the right underlying phoneme for the Quebecois, 'cause I only lost .5 on that section. I am very happy. Yus.

Also, Lisse's wedding was today!! It was so awesome! Like, too awesome to describe. But, I will share this one story. XD

So, in my group of friends, there's one of us who really likes to drink. But they don't know when to stop. And it gets to be a problem. So tonight, we told the bartender to watch out for this person and water-down their drinks, so that they wouldn't cause a scene. Well, in the first hour, this person had 4 drinks (fuzzy navels). They were being a bit of a bit of a bitch after the first few (and may I say that she hadn't dressed appropriately for a wedding, but I don't want to get into it now). Well, the rest of us weren't too happy with this person.

Well, my friend Katie and I talked to the bartender afterward, and he told us that she was just drinking orange juice. He always prepared the drink before she got there so that she never saw that he didn't put in any alcohol XD But she still acted drunk, because she thought she was drinking a lot XD

Anyway, I should get to sleep soon. The last good night of sleep I'll have for awhile... >.<

That story was just too funny to not share XD

Oh, also, I missed the Discovering Ardi program :( I love Human Evolution, and I actually already knew about Ardipithecus ramidus, but this looked interesting. At least I'm getting to see the second part of it.

So I'm Home ^__^

Tomorrow is Lissee's wedding and I'm sooo excited!

Also, on Tuesday, I went to this totally awesome lecture on homosexuality in Ancient Greece. It was really really interesting. To most of Greece, it didn't matter if you slept with someone of the same sex (unless you were a married woman... they couldn't sleep with anyone other than their husband, unless they were loaned out...). In fact, the Ancient Greeks thought that homosexual love was the purest form of love. That's just the basis of it. Totally awesome lecture.

Also, got a GPS today ^^. So I kinda got lost on my way to my Uncle's house and worried a bunch of people... And I got really upset, so my Uncle said that anyone who got that upset about being lost deserved a GPS. And he delivered ^________^ They got my a Garmin Nuvi for my graduation, and left it for my parents to give to me this weekend, 'cause I totally need it (in their words as well as mine). I am so psyched. I will put it to good use tomorrow ^_________^

Also, AAAAAAAHHHHHHHH MIDTERMS SUCK. AND, TSAIKO, GIS MIDTERM IS GOING TO KILL ME. THE BOOK PUTS ME TO SLEEP/CONFUSES ME. AAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHH, TOO MUCH WORK.

That is all.

Ok, so first are a couple drawings I did while I was bored in classes ^___^

( Big Pictures ^^;; )

Dragons or Greek?

There is a special on dragons on the Discovery channel. It is very cool *nods* Y'all should check it out. I only saw the last half earlier and now it's repeating... But I should be doing Greek, but I don't know when this will be on again.

Alright, double time on Greek tomorrow. I swear. It needs to be done. Thank god it's a short assignment.

Dragons win.

Did I say I would tutor people n Greek? For free?

I am dedzor.

Anyway, I promised someone some etymology stuff, so I will deliver.

palai in Greek means 'long ago', from which we get paleolithic, and paleontology
stheno in Greek means to be strong, from which we get calisthenics and astehnia
barus in Greek means heavy, from which we get barometer
asphalia in Greek means safety (from a [not] and sphallo [to trip]), from which we get asphalt, something you don't trip on ^^

And I think that's good for now, but here's something to leave on. A short mythology story to increase your vocab ^^

( Sisyphean Task )